Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system.
A court reporter, court stenographer, or shorthand reporter is a person whose occupation is to capture the live testimony in proceedings using a stenographic machine or a stenomask, thereby transforming the proceedings into an official certified transcript by nature of their training, certification, and usually licensure. This can include courtroom hearings and trials, depositions and discoveries, sworn statements, and more.
Medical transcription, also known as MT, is an allied health profession dealing with the process of transcribing voice-recorded medical reports that are dictated by physicians, nurses and other healthcare practitioners. Medical reports can be voice files, notes taken during a lecture, or other spoken material. These are dictated over the phone or uploaded digitally via the Internet or through smart phone apps.
Real-time transcription is the general term for transcription by court reporters using real-time text technologies to deliver computer text screens within a few seconds of the words being spoken. Specialist software allows participants in court hearings or depositions to make notes in the text and highlight portions for future reference.
A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorder.
A transcription service is a business service that converts speech into a written or electronic text document. Transcription services are often provided for business, legal, or medical purposes. The most common type of transcription is from a spoken-language source into text. Common examples are the proceedings of a court hearing such as a criminal trial or a physician's recorded voice notes. Some transcription businesses can send staff to events, speeches, or seminars, who then convert the spoken content into text. Some companies also accept recorded speech, either on cassette, CD, VHS, or as sound files. For a transcription service, various individuals and organizations have different rates and methods of pricing. Transcription companies primarily serve private law firms, local, state, and federal government agencies and courts, trade associations, meeting planners, and nonprofits.
The transcription machine is a special purpose machine which is used for word or voice processing. This special device manages audio video recording to transcribe them into written or hard copy form. So transcription machines are combination of transcribers and dictation machines.
Speech Recognition & Synthesis, formerly known as Speech Services, is a screen reader application developed by Google for its Android operating system. It powers applications to read aloud (speak) the text on the screen, with support for many languages. Text-to-Speech may be used by apps such as Google Play Books for reading books aloud, Google Translate for reading aloud translations for the pronunciation of words, Google TalkBack, and other spoken feedback accessibility-based applications, as well as by third-party apps. Users must install voice data for each language.
Braina is a virtual assistant and speech-to-text dictation application for Microsoft Windows developed by Brainasoft. Braina uses natural language interface, speech synthesis, and speech recognition technology to interact with its users and allows them to use natural language sentences to perform various tasks on a computer. The name Braina is a short form of "Brain Artificial".
Voice writing is a transcription method used for court reporting, medical transcription, CART, and closed captioning. Using voice writing, a court reporter speaks directly into a stenomask or speech silencer, a hand-held mask containing one or two microphones, and voice-dampening materials. As the reporter repeats the testimony into the recorder, the mask prevents the reporter from being heard during the testimony.
Accessibility apps are mobile apps that increase the accessibility of a device or technology for individuals with disabilities. Applications, also known as, application software, are programs that are designed for end users to be able to perform specific tasks. There are many different types of apps, some examples include, word processors, web browsers, media players, console games, photo editors, accounting applications and flight simulators. Accessibility generally refers to the design of products and environments to be usable by people with disabilities. Accessibility apps can also include making a current version of software or hardware more accessible by adding features. Accessibility apps aim to reduce barriers to technological goods and services, making them more usable for various groups within society. A basic example is that a person who experiences vision impairments is able to access technology through enabling voice recognition and text-to-speech software.
Speechmatics is a technology company based in Cambridge, England, which develops automatic speech recognition software (ASR) based on recurrent neural networks and statistical language modelling. Speechmatics was originally named Cantab Research Ltd when founded in 2006 by speech recognition specialist Dr. Tony Robinson.
Crowdsource is a crowdsourcing platform developed by Google intended to improve a host of Google services through the user-facing training of different algorithms.
Voice computing is the discipline that develops hardware or software to process voice inputs.
Otter.ai, Inc. is an American transcription software company based in Mountain View, California. The company develops speech to text transcription applications using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its software, called Otter, shows captions for live speakers, and generates written transcriptions of speech.
Live Transcribe is a smartphone application to get realtime captions developed by Google for the Android operating system. Development on the application began in partnership with Gallaudet University. It was publicly released as a free beta for Android 5.0+ on the Google Play Store on February 4, 2019. As of early 2023 it had been downloaded over 500 million times. The app can be installed from an .apk file by sideloading and it will launch, but the actual transcription functionality is disabled, requiring creation of an account with Google.
InfraWare is an American technology company that focuses on speech transcription and other technologies for machine-assisted documentation. It has many users who work in the healthcare industry. It is headquartered in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Whisper is a machine learning model for speech recognition and transcription, created by OpenAI and first released as open-source software in September 2022.
Automated medical scribes are tools for transcribing medical speech, such as patient consultations and dictated medical notes. Many also produce summaries of consultations. Automated medical scribes based on Large Language Models increased drastically in popularity in 2024. There are privacy and antitrust concerns. Accuracy concerns also exist, and intensify in situations in which tools try to go beyond transcribing and summarizing, and are asked to format information by its meaning, since LLMs do not deal well with meaning. Medics using these scribes are generally expected to understand the ethical and legal considerations, and supervise the outputs.
